transitional fossils
edyong | January 6, 2010
Around 395 million years ago, a group of four-legged animals strode across a Polish coast. These large, amphibious creatures were among the first invaders of the land, the first animals with true legs that could walk across solid ground. With sprawling gaits and tails held high, they took pioneering footsteps. Their tracks eventually fossilised and their recent discovery yields a big surprise that could rewrite what we know about the invasion of land. These animals were walking around 18 million years earlier than expected.
The evolution of four-legged creatures - tetrapods - is one of…
edyong | September 17, 2009
Meet Raptorex, the "king of thieves". It's a new species of dinosaur that looks, for all intents and purposes¸ like the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, complete with large, powerful skull and tiny, comical forearms. But there's one very important difference - it's 100 times smaller. Unlike the ever-shrinking world of music players and phones, it seems that evolution crafted tyrannosaur technology with much smaller specifications before enlarging the design into the giant predators of the late Cretaceous.
Raptorex is a new species of meat-eating dinosaur, discovered in northwest China by Paul…
edyong | May 20, 2009Yesterday, the entire world changed noticeably as the media, accompanied by some scientists, unveiled a stunning fossilised primate. The creature has been named Darwinius masillae, but also goes by Ida, the Link, the Chosen One and She Who Will Save Us All.
The new fossil is remarkably complete and well-preserved, although the media glossed over these facts in favour of the creature's ability to cure swine flu. Ida was hailed as a "missing link" in human evolution, beautifully illustrating our transition from leaping about in trees to rampant mass-media sensationalism.
Speaking to a group…
edyong | April 22, 2009
Seals and sea-lions gracefully careen through today's oceans with the help of legs that have become wide, flat flippers. But it was not always this way. Seals evolved from carnivorous ancestors that walked on land with sturdy legs; only later did these evolve into the flippers that the family is known for. Now, a beautifully new fossil called Puijila illustrates just what such early steps in seal evolution looked like. With four legs and a long tail, it must have resembled a large otter but it was, in fact, a walking seal.
Natalia Rybczynski unearthed the new animal at Devon Island, Canada…
edyong | February 3, 2009Nine years ago, a team of fossil-hunters led by Philip Gingerich from the University of Michigan uncovered something amazing - the petrified remains of an ancient whale, but one unlike any that had been found before. Within the creature's abdomen lay a collection of similar but much smaller bones. They were the fossilised remains of a foetal whale, perfectly preserved within the belly of its mother. Gingerich says, "This is the 'Lucy' of whale evolution."
The creatures are new to science and Gingerich have called them Maiacetus inuus. The genus name is an amalgamation of the Greek words "…
edyong | January 12, 2009Beipaiosaurus was among the strangest of dinosaurs. It looked like a fusion of body parts taken from several other species and united in the unlikeliest of proportions. It had a stocky body, long arms adorned with massive claws, a long neck topped by an incongruously small head, and a beaked mouth. Bizarre as this cocktail of features is, it's the animal skin that has currently warrants attention.
Fossils of Beipaiosaurus include impressions of its skin and these clearly show long, broad filaments clumped around its head, neck, rump and tail. They are feathers, but most unusual ones. Traces…
edyong | November 26, 2008 Clad in hard, armoured shells, turtles have a unique body plan unlike that of any other animal. Their shells have clearly served them well and the basic structure has gone largely unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. But this unchanging nature poses a problem for anyone trying to understand how they evolved and until now, fossil turtles haven't provided any clues. All of them, just like their living descendants, have fully formed two-part shells.
But three stunning new fossils are very different. They belong to the oldest turtle ever discovered, which lived about 220 million years ago…
edyong | October 8, 2008Many of us believe dinosaurs to be extinct but in truth, they surround us every day. All the world's birds, from the pigeons of our cities to the gulls of our seasides, are descended from dinosaurs, and modern science now classifies the birds with their long-dead kin. The gulf between dinosaurs and modern birds may seem huge, but the discovery of several feathered dinosaurs are seriously blurring the line between the two. And now, new research on the feathered dinosaur Microraptor reveals that birds may have evolved from dinosaur ancestors that flew not on two wings, but on four.
The link…
grrlscientist | July 9, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, flatfish, Amphistium, Heteronectes, transitional fossils, missing link, Matt Friedman
During the development of extant flatfishes, such as this plaice, Pleuronectes platessa, one eye has migrated round the head to lie on the same side as the other. So these fishes have an 'eyed' (up) side and a 'blind' (down) side suitable for their bottom-dwelling lifestyle.
Image: KÃ¥re Telnes.
Flounder, turbot, sole, halibut and plaice (pictured above) are more than just a tasty slab of flesh on your plate. They are flatfishes that spend their adult life lying…
edyong | July 9, 2008Imagine watching a movie where every now and then, key frames have been cut out. The film seems stilted and disjointed and you have to rely on logic to fill in the gaps in the plots. Evolutionary biologists face a similar obstacle when trying to piece together how living species arose from their common ancestors. It's like watching a film with a minimum of footage; the species alive today are just a few frames at the very end, and the fossil record represents a smattering of moments throughout the film's length.
But the gaps, while plentiful, are being slowly filled in. With amazing…
gregladen | November 16, 2007Here is a preliminary list of resources for people to find out more about Intelligent Design. Please feel free to put this on your own site. If you want, email me and I'll send you the HTML code to make this one step easier. But you can also, if you are using Firefox, use "ctrl-u" to display the code and cut and paste it from there.
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